Posts filed under 'Work'
A nice surprise this week - an email from a friend in Germany, who found the blog in passing, and tracked me down to my work email address. What I like about this is that we met back in 1993, and despite not meeting up much since, emails and letters, off and on, have helped us keep up with each other.
Sometimes the world goes rattling ahead and we expect that nothing will stay the same. But he’s still a teacher, I’m still working with teachers (and aspiring ones), and all of a sudden you realise that quite a few things can stay the same. And it’s rather a nice feeling.
I also heard from a friend working abroad - who is taking the trouble to put up lots of nice pics on his blog of life in Asia. Having another friend living in the same country, it’s great to get more of a sense of what life is like there, with both of them in mind. Sometimes speed of change is good - how much easier is it to keep up with people, even after a gap, when it’s so quick and easy to find out how they are getting on, via emails, blogs and so on?
Today, it was time for a game of ‘oh, you know…X too’? A friend at work was showing pictures of his wedding, and we recognised that their photographer was probably related to someone I know from a completely different context. Admittedly, the longer you stay in Edinburgh, the easier it is to play this game, but it’s still nice when it happens, particularly when you’re also saying goodbyes to other people heading away from Edinburgh.
What also interests me here is that all these connections this week came through men - when it’s still probably assumed that women have the monopoly on keeping address books, remembering birthdays, and generally keeping communication flowing. Maybe these chaps are all in the New (Communicative) Man category.
But still, three cheers for continuity. Britain may be a bit hard pressed at the moment, what with difficult financial circumstances at so many different levels. It’s not the ‘Blitz spirit’. But it’s still welcome.
October 23rd, 2009
Through to Glasgow - and beyond! The bright lights of Glasgow Queen Street Lower Level - and the even brighter yellow plastic seating - are good for keeping you awake when heading from A to B.
But what I’d noticed last time I used this station, and was reminded of today, was the almost constant injunction over the tannoy: “Always hold the handrail - and take care on the stairs.”
Now this is all well and good, all risks assessed and dealt with. What interests me is the little light attempts at poetry that public announcements offer. It could be a missing verse from Paul Simon’s “50 ways to leave your lover”. If only he’d taken care on the stairs, he might not have needed to slip out the back, Jack…
Some of these announcements are so ingrained, you almost feel you could slip them into conversation to change the tone, if you weren’t sure what to say next. The melody of them, familiar as verse because we hear them so much, is comforting - as well as becoming fairly devoid of meaning, after a while. Some of them even slip into everyday use, usually to parody ourselves: “exits are here, here and here…”
You can probably add your own, but here’s my selection of ‘public poetry’ options for your next cocktail party:
- “the person you are calling knows you are waiting”
- “a trolley service…of drinks and light refreshments…is available on the train”
- “or why not send a text?”
- “…and…Glenrothes with Thorntons.”
They don’t really say Thorntons. But I live in hope that the trolley service might hand them out some time, as we prepare to uplift all our personal belongings.
September 9th, 2009
I suspect it won’t become a hit single. But after fairly relentless wind and rain (both of us ended yesterday with broken umbrellas), a spot of sunshine today needs a mention, if only for how it changes your view on life.
Tomorrow is the shortest day, and after that, even where it’s not quite believable, let alone visible at that point, we’ll start to get more light again. I read a Monty Don book on gardening one time, where he talked about the time between the clocks going back, and the shortest day, as the hardest point in the year. Forget whatever date in January is meant to herald mass depression, being low on daylight makes it harder to add joy to whatever seasonal comfort you may be indulging in in December.
Last year, I felt very aware of looking out for this change, perceiving the creeping extension of daylight during January. This year, I know about it, but that doesn’t always bring the acceptance of it that I’d hope for. Different features of it seem to affect different people: some hate it being pitch black when the alarm goes off in the morning, others find the darkness so early in the afternoon a difficulty.
In my gap year, I spent the first half waitressing, and realised how easy it was in the winter not to really see the sun at all, especially where you are facing in from a shop window rather than looking out. In an office with large windows, or a home with a good amount of light, it’s a bit easier, but not that much. I should probably try to go out at lunchtime, while it is genuinely light, but that requires a bit of energy, which is also harder in the winter.
Somehow, when you’ve closed the curtains and settled in to lower levels of light for longer, it becomes easier. One of my friends referred to the season of ‘candles and snuggly blankets’ returning, and that helps it seem a cosier prospect.
What I’m trying to suggest is that this is a time of year for needing a little encouragement. Whether that’s enjoying a spot of sun, an extra slice of stollen, or a longer letter from a friend you’ve not heard from for a while, it makes it possible to go on living in the dark for a little longer, with some indication that there is light still to come.
December 20th, 2008
An infrequent occurrence - out for drinks on Friday night last week, meeting Dan’s colleagues and their partners/wives/girlfriends etc. Some of the talk circled, unsurprisingly, around Inigo and other techy stuff. But I also got chatting to one of the women there about what it’s like not to work full time any more - and how we’re both finding surprising stresses in it.
You can boo me offstage at this point (panto metaphor appropriate at this time of year), but even changing to a 9-day fortnight has had more of an impact on me than I expected. The person I was chatting to had reduced her working week too. We both felt better for it. But we also felt guilty, less in control at work than before, perhaps a little smug that alternative arrangements weren’t quite such a good replacement for us at full-time work.
One of my theories in this is that it’s partly a generational thing. At school, as a girl, you got encouragement to keep going if you did well. But the image of keeping the home as well wasn’t out of the picture, maintaining a lot of the ‘knitting things together’ tasks that often fall to women. Even if you didn’t put yourself as part of the knitting brigade.
Somehow, the two of us realised, we keep looking for more ladders to climb, more things to do, being capable. It’s a drug, doing well, being measured by others’ comments on our achievements. Which is also a bit concerning in an era where more and more, pay is performance related. It’s not that that is such a bad thing per se. But it’s the constant increasing of required activity, in so many jobs, that makes it harder and harder to keep achieving at the same level.
So what happens if you do less - if you’re not there all the time? A sneaking suspicion that you’re not quite pulling your weight. An added pressure to ENJOY! when you are away from work - which can itself be a pressure, at the very time when you were meant to be reducing the pressure…
A few months ago, earlier on into the shift of working pattern, there was also a sudden realisation - that you can work fewer hours. The world does not fall apart. Ye verily, there are even others around working fewer hours than me. There comes the smugness again - but also the the thrill and anxiety combined of doing less. And getting away with it.
Sometime I hope, there will come a middle ground, or at least less of a rush up and down the xylophone of opposing feelings. And less of a desire to check that this is still acceptable, permissable. Which is needed, given that I will be trying out this working pattern at a particularly busy time of year, in another few weeks.
I’ve heard often enough of the injunction to be a human be-ing rather than a human do-ing. At least the wind-down in the year, with Christmas, suggests an opportunity to practise being for a while - if that isn’t too active a response.
December 15th, 2008
I grew up in the school of “if it’s a good joke, it’s worth repeating”. I suspect that, separate from this, I am genetically predisposed to like puns, which are a form of repetition in a way, causing you to think about what you’re already familiar with. But the upshot is, I’m all too good at telling people something again…or yet again…because I think it’s worth a mention.
So here’s today’s moment: managed to leave work early, and include a quick visit to RealFoods. I’m about to go in, and smell the familiar health food shop smell…and think, ah that reminds me of the health food shop I briefly worked in…and then remember that I’ve already written about it…
Now admittedly, I’m not visiting the shop all the time, having that scent-memory, boring you with the recollection etc, on a regular basis. But I do forget what I’ve said to whom, or what I’ve written. And the more I think it’s worth passing on, probably all the more likely I am to keep telling the story.
Catching myself at it again tonight, I felt a bit like the goldfish with the 10 second memory. I don’t want to write a string of blog posts that add up to “Nice bowl! Nice bowl! Nice…” And I also know that I get to see plenty of new things, because my brain takes in the fact that they’re new.
Every year I deal with applications from people who have hobbies I’ve never heard of before (underwater hockey, anyone?), health conditions I’ve never come across. And they go off abroad and email with situations I’ve never had to come up with a solution to before. That’s all before I spot things on buses, or open the paper to find out about the latest whatnot we’re all supposed to be interested in.
Blogs are partly about novelty, I guess. You don’t expect to see the same story cut and pasted in, day after day. Perhaps what I’m aspiring to is columnist status, where you can actively get away with repeating yourself, or mentioning particular people, because your readership has got to know them too, through you, and wants the latest installment.
Probably one of the main reasons I write a blog is because I love ideas, I love the variety in the world, I love seeing whether someone else has come across the same, and what they think about it. And some of you even tell me, too…
Some of the nicest thoughts are like the first strawberry of the year. (Yes, I have a conscious awareness of the first strawberry of the year, and a first mince pie too, bracketing the year.) You’d never claim that it was the first ever. But the ‘first for a while…and good!’ is worth a shout about, don’t you think?
November 21st, 2008
…Post-it note?
But of course there is. A free pen. A free cotton bag. A free jute carbon neutral bag. In fact, a free policy booklet that you hadn’t planned on reading in the first place.
Despite Scotland’s happy insistence on state schooling for the majority of its pupils, there’s clearly no such thing as a free education either, if you’re running an exhibition stand. I was struck by the number of IT exhibitors whose products started at a couple of grand upwards. Struck equally by the teachers I spoke to who were enjoying the seminars and the buzz, but had no money really available to spend on their department.
Having just come back from two days on an exhibition stand, at a Scottish schools event, one thing that struck me particularly was the waste that comes with a large exhibition. I was heartened by seeing one company retrieve their quantities of bubble wrap, and rewrap the materials they brought, but they did seem to be an exception.
The talk, however, was free - and teachers enjoy a good talk, so there was plenty of chatting. After two seminars with very low numbers, I was pleased to be in one where a teacher name checked half a dozen opportunities my organisation offers, AND got that response we all long for: the immediate “Wow, how can I get some of that?” That’s the kind of response, from speaker and audience, that you can’t buy.
Thankfully, smiling is free. Encouraging teachers in celebrating their successes. But I discovered that saying thank you to the organisers, when leaving, was in fact priceless - one person in the site office commented “No one ever stops to say thank you…”
Results: one heart at ease; one pair of feet waiting to be freed from their shoes.
September 25th, 2008
Hurrah for a half day on my birthday! I left early today so that I could fulfil a small ambition of mine, and browse the shops on Broughton Street on the way home.
Now Broughton Street may be known for various things, but I’d suggest, increasingly, food. It has the long-established RealFoods at the top, which does health food and much more, but also some brand new places that have opened up in the last few months.
So, started with RealFoods. They are doing all the Gillian McKeith type stuff - lots of alternative grains and so on - but the shop must be a godsend to anyone with food allergies. You name it as an alternative flour, they have it, plus masses of oriental ingredients, along with all the dried fruit, muesli to scoop out of a sack, and so on. I came away with linseeds, and ful medames beans - the latter are very popular in Egypt, so I’ve read, and there’s a recipe I’ve been meaning to try with them.
Broughton Street also has Crombie’s, the high class butcher, well known for its sausages. I decided to play fairly safe, and came away with some very smart beefburgers, which should be good to try.
I missed out the fishmonger at the top of the street, also long established - Something Fishy. I thought it might take too long to finish my shopping and head home, by which point the fish might be complaining a bit. But it is an aim of mine to try proper butchers and fishmongers this year, so I can see what the difference is between supermarket stuff and the specialists.
So, now, to the two new arrivals. Artisanal coffee, chocolate and honey can be had in a fairly new shop that also sells takeaway coffee. Their owner only sells the coffee beans that he likes, but will happily recommend and let you sniff them to see which you like. I made off with some Sumatran coffee which I think is meant to be his favourite. My bag certainly smelt wonderful all the way home.
The other newcomer is a shop selling all the things you might need for cocktails. Again, its owner is chatty, and knowledgeable. He didn’t seem put off by me saying I wasn’t too good with drinking spirits, but told me more about fruit syrups, and so on. He also has glasses and all the other kit for making cocktails. I am hoping he will stock some fruit purees so I can finally try a Bellini (prosecco and white peach pulp).
I didn’t go around explaining it was my birthday - thought that might be a bit obvious - but it was nice to have time to browse, and equally to chat with the shopowners. Certainly RealFoods has so many different lines of stock that you need a good forty minutes just to look round and see what they have.
I should add that it’s been a happily foody morning too - my colleague who does her own bean sprouts, and has been coaching me with my first attempts, gave me some mung beans to try sprouting. My manager found a couple of mini bars of dark chocolate to slip inside my birthday card. And the piece de resistance was battenburg cake, brought in or for another newer colleague who shares the same birthday. (Can’t resist marzipan and cake combined.)
Meanwhile, it’s now about time for a cup of tea. Nice thing about birthdays - the everyday pleasures as well as the special treats.
January 23rd, 2008
Strange feeling, giving away work. Delightful too. I’d been anticipating for a little while being able to pass on the Ireland programme I work on - today I got to write that ‘introducing my new colleague’ email.
In some ways, you kind of feel you could have written it any time. It’s a bit like the feeling when the day comes round to get on a particular plane to a long-booked destination. You could have done it earlier, or any day, in some ways - but the point when it finally happens seems ever so ordinary. (Maybe that’s just my experience with flights. Every year I seem to take longer and longer to believe I’m finally on holiday.)
It’s been a nice programme to work on, encouraging schools in Ireland to link with schools in Scotland. But as I’ve been running it on my own, from the Scotland side at any rate, it can be a bit of an anti-climax. No one to commemorate it with you. On the up side, the colleague taking it on also works with me on with students, so I’ll no doubt keep up with bits of what’s happening.
I’ve been aware for some time of how much my work relies on emails to make things happen. With an email I…confirm someone can go abroad, make their day with the placement they longed for, or equally confirm that they can’t have their heart’s desire but they can still go somewhere worthwhile. It’s simultaneously powerful and very ordinary.
Today I used an email to cut my workload. It would be nice to try a different one tomorrow to give me a payrise…but there’s probably only so much power you can wield at a time.
January 14th, 2008
Just when you thought you’d finally done with leaving dos…another one! Our great PA to the Director and Depute Director is moving on, but her excellent skills meant that she thought to invite some former colleagues to the pub with the rest of us this evening.
The one upside of having people leave is getting a bit more social time with people outside the office. There was a good crowd along to support - and what with it being the end of the first main week back, a certain interest in restoring ourselves, whether with a pint or fine conversation.
I made an effort…I did talk to one or two newer people. But often enough, things like this also give you the chance to have a half-decent chat with people who work in the same office, but whom you don’t see very often. Open plan environment is one thing, group of people all with lots to glue them to their computers is another.
Also really nice to chat more with a colleague who’s now working elsewhere. With lots of new people joining us fairly recently, it is also good to chat to someone who already knows you, and where you can find out what’s happened next in their lives - as well as the opportunity for some joint reminiscences about other colleagues who have also moved away.
Will I up my pub activity this year? Let’s see. With a return of Tattie Fridays (people heading off to get baked potatoes on a Friday lunchtime), as ever, the office does great things for company but less useful ones for your waistline…If I want the people time, I’ll have to choose between hot or cold carbohydrates, it seems.
January 11th, 2008
An opportunity to rib one of my colleagues about a misspelling in a recent email. Trying to indicate a street near our office as our meeting point in case of fire, he alerted everyone to meet at ‘Gentile’s Entry’. (Edinburgh residents can work out the original version.)
For a cultural organisation, you could argue this was a problematic choice: where are our Jewish, and any other faith, visitors meant to go? But I had the opportunity to hear a more regular mis-pronunciation the same day, heading up the close that leads up to the Royal Mile. A tourist stopped me and asked for ‘Princess Street’.
‘Princes’ is not used in so many place names, I’ll grant you, which I think is why ‘Princess’ seems to be said by various visitors to Edinburgh. It made me think that there are probably not so many mispronunciations that give you another word instead of your original choice.
Dan and another friend who grew up in London used to come up with alternative pronuncations for London areas. ‘Streatham’ became ‘St Reathams’, and so on. Dan equally was very pleased a few years back to hear me saying ‘An-tig-u-a’ for another Edinburgh street name, rather than ‘An-teeg-wa’. I had to make the joke against myself for a long time to stop that one being repeated back at me.
My brother came up with two of my favourite mishearings of place names. When a school friend got into an Oxford college (Somerville), he managed to understand that she had got a job at the then local supermarket (Somerfields). Equally, when I got the news of where I was going to be during my gap year teaching (Warsaw), he thought I would be just up the road, so to speak (Walsall).
New housing estates breed rather odd names (Edinburgh will currently offer you Q, The Visio, along with the lovely East Pilton Farm Rigg - try saying that to your taxi driver after a hard night out). I can’t help but think they’re missing out on some great mispronunciations to come.
January 10th, 2008
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